Horse and Carriage
by FantasticallyFoolishIdea
Summary: Nevermind trivialities such as poverty, sickness, and death; paperwork is what really puts their marriage to the test.


**Almost two years without uploading, and this is what I come back with. I'm sorry. It's completely and utterly self-indulgent and awful and I kinda love it even if it cost me like... five-ish(?) nights of sleep. Seriously, the amount of editing it took to make this thing presentable is ridiculous.**

 **Also, Darui and C giving each other shit while simultaneously being disgustedly married is canon. Fight me on it.**

 **The title is lifted from Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage", a beautifully ironic take on, well, love and marriage.**

 **Please note, English is not my first language and I do not have a beta-reader, so you might come across an grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, adverbs (so many adverbs), and so, so, so many commas that shouldn't have been put there but are.**

* * *

Darui pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting down the overwhelming urge to groan. Stacks of paper were piling up around him, some of them higher than his forearm.

In the far-right corner of his desk, the very highest stack was leaning precariously over the edge. Presently, the stack's position seemed to hold up well enough but no experts on structural design were necessary to realise that the slightest jostle would have unfavourable consequences.

No one had ever thought it necessary to warn him of the absurd amounts of paperwork the Raikage's position entailed.

Though he was trying, he couldn't for the life of him remember ever seeing the boss quietly sitting at his desk, stuck between stacks upon stacks of paperwork, back when he had still held office.

Then again, rarely ever had he seen the boss sit at his desk at all, rendering any comparison void. Back then, there had been no point in leaving paperwork on his desk; it inevitably ended up ignored, forgotten or damaged.

Absent-mindedly, he signed off on a jōnin's request for long-term medical leave, but his mind wandered.

Who _had_ been the one to take care of the boss's paperwork? Mabui?

His gaze drifted to the right, straight out the window, until it settled on one of the distant mountain peaks. The movement helped alleviate some of the tension behind his eyelids, but did little for the headache that had been building up steadily for the past two hours or so.

He allowed his eyes to rest for a good thirty seconds of, just enough time for the mountain peak to swim back into focus, and dragged a hand down his face.

Blindly, he reached for the next document.

His fingers fumbled a little but eventually they brushed over what could only be another mission report. Eyes still closed, Darui sluggishly picked up the scroll and moved it in front of him. While he was pulling his hand back, he briefly felt his knuckles brush against paper.

He knew what was about to happen the moment his fingers made contact but he couldn't himself to care enough to intervene. Any attempt of rescue would have come too late anyway.

With the rustle of a hundred oak trees in a typhoon, the stack in the far corner of the desk swayed treacherously. For a nerve-wrecking three seconds, it looked like it was about even out in a position even more precarious than the one before but, true to expectations, gravity won eventually.

Sheets of paper soared through the air; they glided downwards until the floor in the general vicinity of the desk was covered in paper.

Darui didn't even bother to open his eyes.

He slumped forward with the bearing of a broken man. Silently, he started counting backwards from twenty-five. After a minute, his breaths had stopped shuddering.

 _Later. Those could be dealt with later._

With a small portion of his self-control temporarily restored, Darui turned his attention on the mission report in front of him, if only to distract himself from the state he had managed to put his office in.

He made it about two sentences in before the nausea returned.

 _Raikage-sama, with all due respect, before I go into the details of the mission, I humbly wish to bring your attention to the following matter. Please let me point out that all of the issues specified below could have been avoided if my subordinates had not-_

For fear of aggravating his already pounding head even further, Darui refrained from physically slapping his palm against his forehead. Not that he didn't feel the urge to. Quite the opposite, in fact. At the moment, blunt force trauma seemed like an excellent means to erasing any memory of this train wreck of a mission report.

How had someone who thought it appropriate to open a mission report with a personal complaint ever been approved for promotion to chūnin?

Darui was about to check for the shinobi's name, when a sudden wave of apprehensiveness rushed over him. The hazy image of an application form from a couple of weeks ago swam to the surface of his memory. A second, clearer image of that very same application form stained with spilt coffee followed. The last memory fragment to return was the distinct thought of _shit, I'll have to get that sorted out later._

A sinking feeling settled in his stomach.

 _Please no._

Those characters looked dreadfully familiar.

 _Oh Sage please, no._

Had _he_ been the one to approve the promotion?

On days like these, it didn't matter that the Fourth Great War lay ten years in the past already. Mabui's death and the absence of her iron rule over the Hidden Cloud's administrative machinery had left a void the extent of which no one could have conceived of. That wasn't to say that Darui's assistants weren't capable in their own right, only that sometimes–

He was about to bury his face in his hands in frustration, when the door swung open.

Speak of the devil.

Since the intruder hadn't bothered with wasting time on something as trivial as knocking, Darui had a fairly good idea of who exactly had just come waltzing into his office.

Not that he felt much like checking to make sure. In his increasingly despondent state of mind, mindless apathy held a great deal of appeal.

"Tell me you're not bringing more paperwork. _Please_."

C hadn't even closed the door yet, when the sound of Darui's voice made him stop in his tracks. A mixture of concern and incredulity was dawning on his face as he took a second to assess the situation.

Upon spotting the mess on the floor, one of his eyebrows shot up into a delicate arch. He looked like he wanted to ask questions but incidents like this weren't exactly unprecedented and what he didn't already know, C could easily guess from the scene laid out in front of him.

"I didn't." As a matter of fact, his hands were empty, but Darui still hadn't looked at him and therefore had no way of knowing that.

C closed the door with a decisive _click;_ ten brisk steps saw him gripping the desk's edge, leaning forward over several stacks of paper.

"Rather, I thought it was time someone checked up on you and–" he nodded at the cluttered surface between them, "maybe offered you a hand with _that_."

Between his foul mood and C's flippant tone of voice, a ripple of irritation caught hold of Darui. The last vestiges of his pride were rearing their misshapen, little heads and before reason had a chance to intervene, his eyes flashed.

"I'm perfectly capable of handling my own–"

"I know, Darui," C snapped. "I _know_ that. Just… Look." With a sigh, he rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms. Darui inadvertently mirrored the gesture when he leant back in his chair. "It's one of _those_ days, I get that. But–" He unwittingly paused to lick his lips. Despite his annoyance at having been cut off, Darui didn't seize the opportunity to retort right then. His frown deepening, he waited for C to elaborate.

"I'm going to need you get over it."

Darui's eyebrows drew up.

Any other day, he might have commended the frankness; in this particular moment, he would have appreciated a more tactful approach. C remained unfazed.

"Your chakra's been flaring all over the place. It's been well over an hour and, to be honest, even I'm starting to feel nauseous from the sheer amount of misery you're projecting," he hissed. "One of our genin asked me if we were under attack because she mistook it for _killing intent._ I figured it was time to check what our esteemed Lord Raikage was getting up to."

A jolt of embarrassment shot down Darui's spine. Neither of them said anything but the silence felt unbelievable loud. One beat, two beats, three beats passed and C thought he could physically feel Darui hastily wrangling his agitated chakra signature back under control.

The change in the room's atmosphere was remarkable.

Hiding his mortification behind an affected cough, Darui made a show of sitting up straight and reaching for another form from his stack. He hurriedly scribbled his signature at the bottom and reached for the next one, repeating the process.

All the while, his hair conveniently hid his eyes from view. _What an absolute drag._

C put his hands on his hips with a shake of his head but watching Darui fumble he had trouble holding on to his exasperation. Without his consent, his lips were trying to curl into a fond smile.

Darui kept up the charade for a further three signatures.

When it became obvious that C didn't have anything further to add to the matter, he dropped the pretence. He brought up his left hand to rest his forehead against it.

"Sorry about that," he sighed.

With his pen, Darui made a vague sweeping motion that somehow managed to encompass the mess on the floor, the mess on his desk and the mess in his head all at once.

He looked and sounded defeated.

C furrowed his brow but didn't respond straightaway. He was busy studying the small movements of Darui's fingers against his temple with his head tilted in a thoughtful manner.

"That bad, huh." he assessed, though it was said mostly to himself. A mild grin was pulling at the corner of his mouth but there was no real mirth behind it.

C soundlessly stalked around to the other side of the desk, mindful of the heaps of scattered paper.

Darui waited for the other to come to a stop behind him, before he let himself slump back. His head fell back until it met resistance in the form of C's flak jacket. "Worse," he muttered.

C gently raked his fingers through the messy crop of hair before him but didn't even attempt to keep from chuckling.

" _Now_ you're just being dramatic," he stated flatly and Darui hummed in what could pass for either acknowledgment or agreement.

The medical-nin pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers against each of Darui's temples, slowly rubbing two or three small circles into the soft skin until the chakra flow picked up. A soft green glow enveloped his fingertips.

Darui's eyes fell shut the moment the green chakra came into contact with his skin. The throbbing gradually tapered off and Darui nearly groaned in relief.

"Hey C."

"Mhm?"

"In case you ever feel like ditching that good-for-nothing husband of yours, elope with me instead?"

"Don't be ridiculous, he's a good man. And a better leader than you could ever hope to be," he quipped. "You only love me for my hands anyway."

A bark of laughter escaped Darui, nearly displacing C's fingers. With an amused glint in his eyes, he tilted his head back a little further until he could fix him with an exaggerated leer. "You're being modest. Your face looks kinda okay sometimes."

His only warning came in the form of a disgustingly saccharine smile. A second later, the sharp nip of an electric shock interrupted the flow of healing chakra.

Given the underhandedness of the attack, Darui felt no shame for the undignified yelp that had escaped him.

Behind him, C snorted in an unsuccessful attempt to stifle his giggling.

Rolling his eyes, Darui rubbed at the tender spots in hopes of getting rid of the unpleasant tingling sensation the prank had left. C – the bastard – had the gall to act as if nothing had happened and leant down to place a kiss just above the very patch of skin that had just suffered abuse at his hand.

Gently but firmly, he removed Darui's hands so he could apply one last surge of healing chakra to do away with the last bit of discomfort.

"There are places where a stunt like that would get you put on trial for high treason, s _parks,_ " Darui muttered darkly, but the threat lacked any actual heat.

The flow of chakra around his temples cut off abruptly as C placed his hands on his shoulders instead. "Darui, are you by any chance-"

With practiced ease, he pulled a little this way and that, gave a shove there, and occasionally dug his fingers into these, these and _those two spots in particular_ in and around his trapezius muscles until he had Darui sitting in a position he deemed acceptable. Only then did he lean back down to put his mouth level with Darui's left ear.

"-pulling rank on me?" he murmured, voice laced with mirth and just enough insinuation to betray the vulpine grin he was wearing.

Darui didn't feel like indulge him and rising to the bait; he settled for an appreciative hum as C flattened his hands against the area just above his shoulder blades to channel more chakra.

With C otherwise occupied, Darui picked up his pen once again and reached for the mission report from earlier. He put his signature at the bottom and stuck a post-it to the scroll asking his aide to send the squad captain's personnel file in for re-evaluation along with the incriminating mission report.

As he was jotting down his signature on the academy's request for approval on another order of office supplies, a thought struck him.

"I never pull rank on you. You don't _fear_ me enough to pull rank on you," he drawled. "Heaven knows how the boss got you to shut up."

With a shrug, C bent down until his cheek was almost brushing Darui's.

"Tell you a secret."

"Hm?"

"The Fourth never forgot his holey underwear at my place."

Darui groaned. " _Ten years_ and you're still bringing that up. Once, alright? It was laundry day and I was running late, get over-"

In his ear, C's laughter rang clear as a bell. Right, ten years and the sound still managed to send a curl of warmth to Darui's chest. For appearances' sake, he schooled his features into a scowl anyway.

"Thrice, but whatever."

"I hope you're aware that I only put up with you because of your somewhat convenient skill-set."

"Whatever you say, _Lord Raikage_ ," C retorted and Darui briefly wondered how you could mispronounce _you old fool_ to such a degree that it sounded like an altogether different phrase.

With a light slap to his back, the medical-nin let the flow of chakra fade and languidly slid his hands down along the front of Darui's flak jacket, all but draping himself over his shoulders. "I only married you for the tax benefits anyway."

In a less charitable mood, Darui might have compared his spouse to an overly chatty blanket, but as it was his head was clear, his shoulders relaxed, and C, aside from being a familiar weight against his back, doubled as a welcome source of heat in the slight chill of his office.

"How surprisingly romantic of you," Darui countered. "And here I spent years thinking you were hoping to collect the widower's pension." As he spoke, he looked over three more order sheets, all related to the impending renovation of Training Field 4.

"Don't be stupid. You're only eligible for that if your spouse is killed in the line of duty," C murmured against his neck, loosely tangling his fingers in front of Darui's chest. "If anyone's gonna kill you, it's me. That thing about leaving your used coffee cups all over the living room by the way-"

Perhaps it said something about them that threats of grievous bodily harm were tended to be met with poorly disguised chortling.

"You're welcome to try _,"_ Darui drawled, not quite taking his attention off the documents in front of him. With his free hand, however, he quietly went about disentangling C's right hand until he managed to lace the other's fingers with those of his left.

"Just don't let yourself get caught." Absent-mindedly, he brought up their entwined hands and pressing his lips against the back of C's hand. " _High treason_ , remember?"

C responded in kind, tangling his right hand in Darui's hair and placing a kiss on his temple.

"Hm…" He paused as if to weigh his options. "Nah, I think I'll keep you around a little longer."

Giving C's hand a light squeeze, Darui nodded his acknowledgment. C returned the gesture before he pushed off of him in one fluid motion. "Anyway, was good talking to you. I gotta check in on the guys in comms. I'll see you at home."

Dragging his hand through Darui's hair one last time, he flickered over to the door.

Already part-way out the door, an afterthought made him stop. "Try not to overdo it in the meantime," he called.

"Oi, C."

"Hm?"

"Thank you."

* * *

 **Somewhere in the far corner of the room, Omoi is suffering a nervous breakdown. Sneak-attacks? Murder? High treason? Is it his duty as a bodyguard to step in? Or maybe that's what marriage is like. Is that what marriage is like? Lord Raikage didn't signal for help and he doesn't seem particularly bothered. What if he can't signal for help because several vital points are within C's reach? Maybe he should step in after all, just to be sure. But what if C ends up taking the Fifth hostage? Can he really take a risk like that-**

 **Check my profile for my tumblr. I really appreciate any kind of interaction.**


End file.
